Kyiv mayor says city faces fresh onslaught of Russian drone, missile attacks

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: May 23, 2025 10:12 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

Russia attacked Ukraine's superior Kyiv aboriginal connected Saturday with drones and missiles, triggering fires, strewing debris successful districts passim the metropolis and injuring astatine slightest 8 people, the city's politician said.

Reuters witnesses saw and heard successive waves of drones flying implicit Kyiv, and a bid of explosions jolted the city.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 2 residents had required infirmary attraction and that aerial defence units were successful action.

Pictures posted online showed fume billowing from the apical of 1 artifact of apartments and flames leaping from portion of different arsenic exigency crews trained h2o connected it. An orange-red glow lit up the metropolis arsenic plumes of fume wafted crossed the horizon.

Klitschko said fragments from 1 drone struck the apical level of an flat gathering successful the Solomyanskyi territory connected the westbound slope of the Dnipro River, which bisects the city. One flat gathering was connected occurrence successful the area, as was 1 non-residential building.

Timur Tkachenko, caput of Kyiv's subject administration, said a occurrence had besides breached retired connected 2 floors of an flat gathering successful the Dniprovskyi territory connected the other bank.

Officials besides reported a occurrence successful Obolon successful the city's bluish suburbs and fallen debris connected a buying centre successful the aforesaid area. They said drone fragments deed the crushed successful a fig of different wide separated neighbourhoods.

An aerial alert remained successful effect much than 2 hours aft it was archetypal declared.

The overnight strikes followed respective days of Ukrainian drone attacks — immoderate 800 attacks — connected targets wrong Russia, including superior Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had vowed connected Friday to respond to those attacks.

WATCH | A ample speech of prisoners:

Hours earlier the caller question of attacks connected Kyiv, Russia and Ukraine began a large captive exchange, swapping hundreds of soldiers and civilians successful the archetypal signifier of an speech that was agreed connected by the 2 sides astatine a gathering successful Istanbul past week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the archetypal signifier brought location 390 Ukrainians, with further releases expected implicit the play that volition marque it the largest swap of the war. Russia's Defence Ministry said it received the aforesaid fig from Ukraine.

Michael "Mick" Mulroy, a erstwhile U.S. lawman adjunct caput of defence, said the information that a captive swap was taking spot did not needfully mean the 2 sides were getting person to ending the conflict.

"It's evidently bully that the Ukrainians have gotten their prisoners of warfare back," helium told ABC News.

"It is simply a bully thing, but it does not, successful my opinion, get america immoderate person to a ceasefire," helium added.

Drone usage expanding arsenic warfare rages on

Russia and Ukraine have increasingly turned to drones to onslaught targets on the beforehand lines and beyond.

The 2 countries person been locked successful a authorities of all-out warfare ever since Russia launched a full-scale penetration of its neighbour in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials person repeatedly signalled that drones and related technologies stay captious to its combat against the continuing Russian invasion.

This past week, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, said Russia had been waging a warfare of attrition for much than a twelvemonth and, fixed Ukraine's smaller forces and hard economical circumstances, Kyiv's lone anticipation was to trust connected precocious technology.

"We tin talk lone astir a high-tech warfare of survival, utilizing a minimum of quality resources, a minimum of economical means to execute maximum benefit," Zaluzhnyi, who antecedently served arsenic Ukraine's service chief, said during a code astatine a forum successful Kyiv connected Thursday.